


To Feed the Good Wolf

by girlpire



Category: Angel: the Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: Canon Het Relationship, Collars, Comfort Sex, Cunnilingus, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Full Moon, Het, Licking, Light Bondage, Nightmares, Oral Sex, Sex, Werewolves, Wolfsbane
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-11
Updated: 2020-12-11
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:53:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,974
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28015779
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/girlpire/pseuds/girlpire
Summary: Angel helps Nina resist the change during a full moon.See also: Angel saves his girlfriend with sex."I'm starting to think you're actually enjoying this," she says."Enjoying what?"She gestures to her chain."Oh, you mean having a beautiful woman chained to my bed?" He smiles. "I don't hate it."
Relationships: Angel/Nina Ash
Kudos: 7





	To Feed the Good Wolf

*  
  
Nina smells blood. She's running through the woods naked, so quickly her feet barely bend the grass before she's moving lightly away, patches of moonlight glinting off her blonde hair through the trees. Her breathing sounds harsh to her own sharp ears, but she knows the other nighttime animals won't notice her passing; she's one of them now, at home in the shadowed woods. Her only fear is the thing coming after her, the dark shape stalking her through the forest, which has belonged to him since the beginning. Now that she is in his world, it is only natural that she belongs to him too. He is coming to claim her.  
  
The smell of blood is thick in the air. Her head clouds with the scent of it, confusing her direction. Nina runs because she is being hunted. She knows what she is running from, but she doesn't know where she is going or how to get out of this forest. It seems to go on forever, trees and trees and trees, and he is coming for her, and she doesn't know how to escape. That is the most frightening thing of all.  
  
She wakes with a sudden intake of breath. The blood is still there, the smell of it hovering over the bed like a woodland mist, and for a moment she doesn't know she's awake. In her mind, the small movement on the bed behind her is the evil thing finally catching hold of her, and she screams, nearly falls off the edge in her struggle to get away. Would have fallen if he hadn't grabbed her.  
  
"Nina!" he whispers. "Nina, shh... shh, it's me. Nina, it's just me." Strong arms pull her close, restraining her at first, then comforting as her body begins to relax against him. Right. Not an evil thing. Just a vampire.  
  
"It's okay," he's murmuring in her ear. "I've got you; you're safe. Everything's okay."  
  
She closes her eyes again as he strokes her hair, his hand bumping against the thick chain hooked onto the collar at her neck, heavy links clinking together. This is harder than she thought it would be.  
  
"Another nightmare?" he asks, and she just nods. "The same one?"  
  
She nods again, then says, "There was blood this time. I could smell it." She inhales deeply. "I can still smell it. Do you?"  
  
"It's yours. I think you..." He takes her hand and gently turns it to look at her palm. "You hurt yourself." There are four red crescent shapes, blood still beading slowly along the edges. Her fingernails are dark.  
  
"Oh," she says, staring.  
  
"Maybe we should..." He pauses awkwardly.  
  
"What?"  
  
"I was going to say maybe we should trim your fingernails." He frowns. "I think I have some gloves you could wear? So it won't happen again."  
  
Her other small hand comes up to press lightly against his hand, palm to palm. His fingertips extend a full inch past hers. "They'd fall off," she says.  
  
He sighs, sliding his fingers between her fingers. "I'm sorry. Sleeping was a bad idea. I just thought, since they said to try and relax..."  
  
"It was a good idea," she says. "In theory."  
  
"Want me to light some more of that stuff?" He glances over toward the tiny altar they've set up beneath the window. The bowl of herbs is still smoking slightly.  
  
"I think that's enough," she says. The smoke drifts upward, curling into odd shapes in front of the dark drape over the window. There’s a tiny bit of moonlight seeping in around the edge of the curtain, but mostly the room is dark. It doesn’t matter, though; they can both see in the dark. She adds, "It sort of stinks, doesn't it?"  
  
He smiles a little. "I wasn't going to mention it."  
  
"When they said it would burn like incense, I guess I thought it would smell like incense."  
  
"At least it's working," he says.  
  
Nina looks at the window. It wasn’t covered during the day, but he covered it for tonight. Probably thought she'd feel safer if she couldn't see. But she feels the moon just outside, hovering within the rectangle of glass. Knows exactly where it would be, what it would look like if she pulled back the drape.  
  
She took French in high school. The word for "full" is the same as the word for "pregnant." She doesn't remember the word for "wolf."  
  
"How do you feel?" he asks her.  
  
"I'm okay," she says quietly. "A little tense." Smelling the blood makes it worse, and she gestures with her wounded palm. "This isn't helping."  
  
"You want to go wash it off?" He reaches for the buckle on her wide leather collar, but she stops his hand before he can release her.  
  
"Better not," she says. “Don’t want to risk it.”  
  
He just nods and strokes her hair again, his hand coming to rest over the chain at her neck. The just-in-case chain. Just in case this doesn’t work. Just in case she tries to kill him. He’d tried to tell her it wasn’t necessary, that he would stay with her anyway, that he could protect himself if the herbs and meditation didn’t work – and anyway they’re _going_ to work – but she insisted. There’s a tranquilizer gun on the floor at his side of the bed. She’s scared to death of hurting him, especially after last time.  
  
They both look at the blood on her palm. Even though it's her own blood, the smell of it still makes her hungry. It makes him hungry too; she can tell. And for the millionth time she thinks, this is fucked up.  
  
After a long pause, he says finally, "You're not a monster, Nina." Like he's been thinking about saying it for a while but didn't know how.  
  
She looks at him, but he’s still looking at the red smear on her hand. "You mean the same way you're not a monster?" she asks.  
  
"We're not bad people," he says quietly. "Neither of us. We're just... people."  
  
He goes on looking at her palm. She can’t really tell if he’s looking at it or if he’s just thinking in that direction. After another significant pause, she says, "Well, that’s reassuring."  
  
He glances up from the blood. “What?”  
  
“Nothing.” She sighs, turning away.  
  
Angel shifts up against her back, rests one arm around her waist and stretches the other underneath the pillow. Nina can hear the links of her chain clinking as he plays idly with it.  
  
“This is the first relationship I’ve ever had,” she says, “where my primary concern is that one of us might eat the other one.”  
  
“Most of my relationships either begin or end that way,” he says.  
  
“Again, I am reassured.”  
  
He smiles. Leans up and says softly in her ear, “How about I promise I won’t devour you if you promise you won’t devour me?” He smooths her hair back from her face and kisses the corner of her jaw.  
  
“Deal,” she agrees. “Let’s shake on it.” She sticks her hand back over her shoulder. The bloody one.  
  
He just looks at it.  
  
“What’s the matter?” she asks innocently. She turns a little to look back at his face, and he gives her an apologetic smile.  
  
“Um. Sorry, I’m just... that’s really... distracting. With the blood.”  
  
“Uh huh." She rolls completely onto her back beside him and stares up at her hand as well. "So much for not being a monster,” she sighs.  
  
He looks a little hurt. "You really think that's what we are?"  
  
She waves her bleeding hand in front of his face. "You want this?" she asks. Like that's her answer.  
  
He looks at her palm for a moment, then rolls onto his back too, folding his arms behind his head. The smell of the blood seems thicker now than before. "You're teasing me," he says, staring up at the ceiling. "That's not very nice."  
  
She sits up a little and leans over him, looking down. He's pouting, and it makes her smile. She holds her hand above his face and says, quietly, "You can... if you want."  
  
He looks at her for a second to see if she's being serious, and then, deciding that she is, he slowly reaches up and cups a hand behind her hand, starts to draw it closer to his mouth. But then something occurs to her, and Nina pulls away. "You won't..." she starts. She doesn't really know how to ask this. "I mean, my blood... it won't do anything to you, right?"  
  
He tilts his head. "Are you asking if I'll turn into a werewolf?"  
  
"Um. I guess... yeah. I don't know if that's... I mean, is that even how it works?" She feels suddenly kind of stupid. Like she ought to know this already. It's what she _is_.  
  
"You can only turn people into a wolf by biting them," he says. "But no, it wouldn't work on me." He takes her hand again and slowly brings it down to his lips.  
  
"Why wouldn't it work on you?" she asks, watching as his pink tongue comes out and touches her palm softly. "Because you're a...?"  
  
"Yeah," he murmurs. He licks gently at the tiny cuts. "There's only enough room for one demon in me." He pauses and adds with a little smile, "So you can bite me as much as you want." Then he turns his attention back to her hand.  
  
Nina finds the reality of Angel licking her palm much more erotic than she'd expected to. The four little wounds sting as his tongue moves lightly over them. Her whole body feels stretched tight tonight, almost like her inside is bigger than her outside, like there's something trying to burst out of her, but she's holding it in. It makes her skin feel hypersensitive, and the licking causes her fingers to twitch. She swallows. "I think I could make room inside for two demons," she says, "if one of them was you."  
  
He licks the last of the blood from her palm and presses a soft kiss to the dark crescent shapes, his fingers circled loosely around her wrist. "There's a Cherokee legend," he tells her, "that says all people have two wolves inside them. A good wolf and an evil one."  
  
His thumb strokes slowly back and forth over the inside of her wrist, right over her pulse point. Even though his hand is cool against her, the motion sends a warm tingle through her whole arm. "Yeah?" she says.  
  
"They're fighting each other. Constantly, throughout your entire life. Sometimes the good wolf has the upper hand, but sometimes the evil one does." Angel's thumb moves slowly down the inside of her wrist and then back up again. She shivers. "When they came up with that story," he says, letting go of her in order to touch the chain hanging from her collar, "they probably never pictured the struggle being so literal."  
  
She watches his hand playing with her chain. He's lying on his back with one hand behind his head, the other swinging the links lightly back and forth so casually, like it's not weird or anything for her to be wearing this collar and chain to bed, just interesting. He doesn't look scared at all. Whether it's because he has faith in her to stave off the change or because he's confident in his own ability to protect himself if she can't, she doesn't know. The other end of the chain is bolted to the floor underneath the headboard. She has room to move all over the bed or stand beside it, but that's all.  
  
"I'm starting to think you're actually enjoying this," she says, staring down at his hand.  
  
"Enjoying what?"  
  
She gestures to her chain.  
  
"Oh, you mean having a beautiful woman chained to my bed?" He smiles. "I don't hate it."  
  
"Pervert," she mutters. She slumps down onto the bed beside him, and he chuckles softly, gathering her into his arms. Everywhere his skin touches her skin feels like a relief, like she can relax because he's helping her hold her demon inside. She thinks about him touching her all over, all of his skin against all of her skin. Her very aware, very sensitive skin. She nuzzles her face against his chest and slides one bare leg over his legs, the silky material of his pajama pants cool against her inner thigh.  
  
He runs his fingers softly through her hair. "Do you want to try sleeping again?" he asks.  
  
No, she thinks. But out loud she says, "Okay." And not long afterwards she falls into another restless sleep, her head on Angel's chest. The unpleasant, greasy smell of burning aconite and other herbs brushing against her heightened senses.  
  
Nina is running through the woods. The evil thing is after her again, or else he's _still_ after her, so close she can nearly feel his hot breath behind her knees. There's no way for her to escape; her two pale, naked legs and clumsy body aren't as fast as his four sleekly muscled limbs. Any moment she's going to feel his powerful jaws closing around her ankle. She goes on running, though, as fast as she can, twigs and brambles catching at her skin as she pushes through the midnight woods. There's nowhere for her to hide. He knows this forest better than she does.  
  
Sooner or later, Nina knows she's going to have to turn and face him. She's just putting off the inevitable. But she's afraid - afraid she won't be strong enough, that once he takes her, he'll have her forever. That if he claims her tonight, she'll lose an important part of herself, a part that she'll never be able to get back. So she runs.  
  
Her terrified feet take her right to the edge of a wide chasm, and without even stopping to think, she leaps across, doing whatever it takes to put space between herself and the evil thing. But she doesn't quite make it all the way. Her fingertips grasp the edge of the other side and she dangles, panting, trying to pull herself up, toes scrambling wildly at the crumbling earth of the cliffside searching for a foothold. When she looks up, she can see the pregnant moon shining more brightly than ever, and then she sees the light suddenly blotted out by the dark shape of the evil thing as it leaps across the chasm and over her head, lands just in front of her hands gripping the cliff, and turns its yellow eyes toward her, snarling.  
  
Nina's abrupt scream vibrates against Angel's chest. For a few seconds, she doesn't understand his quiet words, and she tries to scramble away from the vice-like arms holding her still. She feels like a trapped animal, and she lashes out briefly, tearing the smooth skin across his side with her fingernails before she realizes where she is and who she's with. Breathing heavily, she forces herself to calm down, focusing on the soft sound of Angel's voice, and finally goes still, lying limp against him. His arms loosen fractionally around her, from restraining to comforting, and he goes on whispering reassurances. When she smells the blood and sees the damage she's caused to his perfect skin, she starts to cry.  
  
"Nina... shh, baby, it's alright... you're alright..." He's petting her, smoothing her hair back away from her face as her cheek slips against his chest, slick with her tears. His other arm is around her lower back, holding her securely to him, her thin tank top pushed up just enough for his hand to rest flat against her skin. "Just a dream, Nina, I've got you..."  
  
She sniffs a wet sniff. "I hurt you," she whispers. "I'm sorry..."  
  
"Just a couple of scratches," he murmurs back. "I've had worse." He goes on petting her and adds gently, "You've given me worse."  
  
He meant it as a reassurance: he'd be fine like always; she couldn't really damage him. But the memory of nearly tearing him to shreds combined with the knowledge that she might actually kill him one day sends a quiet sob through Nina's body, and she squeezes her eyes shut, hugging him tighter, trembling. The collar feels uncomfortably tight around her throat, but she doesn't dare to take it off or even loosen it. If her own tenuous strength fails, it's the only thing that will hold the wolf at bay.  
  
Angel's hand rubs up and down her back. Her body is so sensitized that she can feel the tiny, translucent hairs on her skin, each one individually, as they move with his palm. She swallows, sniffs again, reaches up a hand to swipe at her eyes. Her face and neck and between her legs feel hot, but her hands and feet feel cold. She manages to stop crying. She focuses on Angel's hands instead.  
  
"Do you want some water or anything?" he asks her after a few minutes of holding her, of rubbing her back. "Your skin feels too warm."  
  
"No," she breathes softly. What she wants is just for him to go on touching her, for him to touch her everywhere it's possible to be touched. She's never felt this way before, so stretched and tense and hot, her wolf so close to the surface but not breaking through. She wants Angel to cover her completely, press against her, help her hold her demon in. She doesn't say anything about it, but she can hardly bear his cool hand stroking along her back; it's just not enough.  
  
The wolfsbane burning quietly in the bowl under the window seems to be mocking her. It's supposed to help her control herself, but it just sits there stinking while she suffers. Over it, she can smell Angel's blood and it makes her hungry, and she swallows the saliva pooling in her mouth. She ought to be moving; she ought to be running. She's got too much energy to just be lying here like this. She forces herself to lie still in Angel's arms, but there's another force thrumming through her body, compelling her to _go_.  
  
She lets it have five minutes to convince her. And then she gives up.  
  
"Angel," she says softly, hand curling into a tight fist on top of his chest.  
  
"Mmm?" he answers.  
  
"Angel, I think... I think I'm going to... change," she says. She tries to keep her voice steady, not howl at him to run. Her fingernails find the same marks in her palm as before.  
  
His body goes completely still underneath her for a moment, but he responds calmly, unmoving. "No you're not."  
  
"Yes. I am." Very carefully, she extracts herself from his arms and backs away to the corner of the bed, sits there with her knees drawn up, her fists on top of them, her toes curled, holding on. He sits up and watches her. "You should go," she tells him.  
  
"I'm not going anywhere," he says firmly. "And you're not going to change."  
  
"It's too much," she whispers, curling shakily around herself. She can hear the moon like a drum beyond the window, beckoning. She can _hear_ it. "I can't... I can't stop. Please go." Please. _Please._  
  
"No," he says calmly. "You can stop it if you want to. Just take a deep breath, and relax--"  
  
"Relax," she repeats incredulously. Like it's this thing that can just happen on command. She shakes her head. "Just leave me, Angel. Please. I don't... I don't want to hurt you." Again.  
  
"Then don't," he says simply. He moves toward her cowering form and she doesn't move away, afraid to move, afraid that if she moves then she'll lose her hold, and the wolf will burst forth from her skin to tear her lover to bits. That's how close she is: one move.  
  
He puts a hand on her hand. All of her focus immediately goes to that hand. She can't let her hand change; if she did it would hurt him. He puts his other hand up to her cheek, to her hot skin. She leans into it. The sensation of having something inside that needs to come out is so strong, almost like needing to throw up, knowing how much better you'll feel afterwards. It's hard to swallow down.  
  
"Nina, look at me," he says, and she does. "You're not going to hurt me," he says. "Because you're not going to change. Alright? You can do this. You're stronger than the wolf." He wiggles her hand back and forth on top of her knee. "Right?"  
  
Concentrating desperately, she nods.  
  
"I want you to say it. Say 'I'm stronger than the wolf.'"  
  
She swallows. She means to say the words, but just as she starts to, something else comes out instead, in a tiny, scared voice: "What if I'm not?"  
  
He gives her a little reassuring smile. "Then it would be really stupid of me to do this," he says. And he leans toward her, and he presses a soft kiss to her mouth.  
  
The kiss lingers between them. Nina barely moves, letting Angel tease her burning lips apart with the barest hint of soft tongue. She lets her concentration shift to him, to his mouth kissing her, his hand cooling her cheek. And then she starts to kiss him back just a little, just enough to be encouraging. When he finally pulls away, her lips are still open and pink, inviting. He looks stubbornly into her eyes.  
  
"You're right," she breathes softly. "That was stupid." But the moondrumming isn't quite as loud in her head anymore, and her hands aren't shaking.  
  
"I know you can control it," he says quietly, his hand going through her damp hair, pushing it back from her face. "I'm not scared of you, Nina. You're not going to hurt me."  
  
"You can't know that," she says. And she wants him to argue with her, tell her that he does know, give her some irrefutable reason, make her believe that it's true. She wants to believe. But he does her one better.  
  
"I'll prove it to you," he says. And he kisses her again.  
  
This time her mouth opens to him right away - she can't help it, can't not kiss him back - but she manages to murmur, "Stop," against his lips. She needs to concentrate. She needs to pay attention to her body, to the wolf, to the moon. She needs to worry about hurting him, and she can't do these things when his mouth is on her, when his hands are touching her skin.  
  
"No," he whispers back, and she can feel her own hot breath in his mouth. And he goes on kissing her, as though there's nothing to be afraid of, like at any moment she's not going to become this hideous monster and rip his head off. Like it's the simplest, most normal thing in the world just to sit here on the bed and kiss each other.  
  
He nudges her knees apart, pulls her hips forward and lays her carefully back on the bed underneath him, still kissing her thoroughly. She doesn't have time to think, just lets him maneuver her body into the position he wants, her head pressed softly to the pillow and knees bent on either side of him. She can smell the reaction of her body to his kisses, knows he can smell her too, and for once she isn't self-conscious or embarrassed by it at all. She's too busy trying to remember to breathe, too busy feeling the smooth slide of the bedsheet against her feet, too busy kissing her vampire's soft lips. But in her belly there's still an icy tingle of fear that she won't be able to keep up the control.  
  
"Relax, Nina," he murmurs, sliding a cool hand up her side, letting it slip beneath her tank top, along her hot skin. "Don't be scared. I'm right here."  
  
She closes her eyes, nods briefly. She understands what he's doing - by refusing to leave her alone, by getting even closer than he was before, he's effectively forcing her to keep the wolf in check. He knows there's no way she can let it out with him this close, that she would never let it hurt him again, not as long as she had any shred of her human self to hold onto. He's baiting her with his slow kisses and gentle hands, relying completely on her will to protect him. She sort of hates him for using her love against her, but she's unwilling to protest any more than she already has. Let him go on kissing her. She wants him.  
  
His big hand cups over a soft, wobbly breast beneath her shirt, thumb brushing over her nipple. It firms to his touch, and she sighs into his mouth, slides a hand around the back of his neck as she kisses him. He tastes wet and cool and kind of minty to her hot tongue. His hand leaves her breast and he shifts his weight above her, and then the other hand comes up on the other side, pushing her tank up with it to bare both soft mounds. She would wriggle out of the white cloth if she could, but the collar and chain are still there, and anyway he's got good enough access this way to move down and take one of the pink buds in his mouth.  
  
Her fingers entwine in his soft hair, and she forgets to breathe for a moment, then overcompensates by breathing too much. When she presses her chest up toward his mouth, the lines of her ribs show briefly beneath the skin, and he runs a palm along her side, stimulating her hypersensitive body as he teases her nipple with blunt teeth and tongue. He spends a long time doing this, and she moans quietly, and she thinks her skin might split open but it doesn't, and she feels feverish and damp.  
  
He eventually lets her nipple go with a final soft flick of his tongue and moves to the other one. The one his mouth abandoned is dark and wet, sticking up stiffly from its soft mound, and his fingers bump over it as he works at the other one with gentle sucking pulls. He pinches the dusky wet bud and Nina inhales sharply through her mouth, her hips tilting up beneath him to press herself against his thigh. This is wrong, she thinks. It's dangerous. But then he bites the underside of her breast softly, and she thinks she can probably control the wolf a little while longer.  
  
With a last light rake of his teeth, Angel relinquishes her nipple and moves slowly down Nina's body, pressing soft kisses along her ribcage and down over the hollow of her belly button. His fingers slip underneath the white cotton of her panties at one hip, and as he tugs the material down, he leaves another kiss in its place. "I know I said I wouldn't devour you," he murmurs against her skin, "but I just can't help myself..."  
  
The sound of his voice, quiet and husky, makes her stomach flutter. "It's okay," she murmurs back, lifting her hips so he can pull down the other side as well. "We never shook on it, remember?"  
  
He huffs a small chuckle, and she can feel his breath on her thigh. Then he slips her panties down her legs and off, and drops them over the edge of the bed onto the floor. She watches him kiss one of her knees before pushing them gently apart, spreading her thighs with his hands. When he looks at her, she feels a flush of desire heating her already hot skin. The air feels thick with her scent, even over the smell of the herbs burning under the window.  
  
Angel kisses a cool trail up the inside of one hot thigh. He spends some time mouthing over the indention where it joins her hip, and Nina finds herself subtly shifting in that direction, attempting to direct his tongue where she wants it. Angel slides his hands underneath her hips and holds her still.  
  
She endures the tiny licks and kisses all over her thighs and puffy mound, the gentle tugging of her soft blonde fur with his teeth, sighs of cool breath against slick pink skin. She endures, but she's going to go mad if he continues to tease her. "Angel," she breathes. "Please." Her insides feel hot like boiling water; her outside feels tight and stretched. " _Please._ "  
  
He looks up at her face, his mouth on her but not _on_ her. "Please what?" he asks quietly.  
  
"Please... touch me. Put your tongue inside me." The words make her hot; everything feels hot.  
  
"Okay," he murmurs. "But you have to promise me something."  
  
She tries not to breathe so heavily. "What?"  
  
"You have to promise me you won't change... while I'm doing this."  
  
The request startles a short laugh out of her.  
  
"Because that would be..." He makes a face like he's picturing performing oral sex on a werewolf.  
  
She laughs again and kicks him lightly on the shoulder. But she says, "I promise." And so Angel puts his tongue to her, exactly where she needs it, and licks.  
  
It doesn't seem right that such a small touch should generate such powerful sensation. A single lick against her pink hot skin has Nina arching her head back and fisting the sheets, her toes curling. But then he does it again, and again, and she breathes and moans and presses her hips up to his mouth. She'd thought she'd go mad without this touch, but now that she has it, it's so intense she can hardly bear it.  
  
"Oh God," she groans, voice scarcely there at all. "Oh God, oh God..." She can hear the slick, sticky sounds of his mouth moving against her, and she rests one foot on his shoulder, spreads her thighs wide. He's paying particular attention to that shiny swollen bump of pink flesh, and when she looks down to watch him, he's got his eyes closed softly, like he's enjoying something wonderful that he hasn't had the chance to taste for a long time. This is only the third time he's done this to her, but he always makes that blissful expression. It's about the sexiest thing she's ever seen. "Mmmm, Angel..." she breathes.  
  
It doesn't take very long at all. Her body's so sensitive that he's not even been at it for five minutes before Nina comes hard, shaking, gushing, gasping his name. He seems to suck the climax right out of her, and he goes on lapping at her slick flesh until she nudges him away with her foot, though she knows he'd willingly go again. She literally doesn't think she could take any more. "Oh God," she repeats softly as he moves away from between her legs. She lies sprawled on the bed, all sweaty and limp, her face flushed. "Why are you so good at that?"  
  
He's smiling a little as he crawls up the bed. "You asked me that last time."  
  
"You didn't answer then, either," she says. Then, "I bet you were a lesbian in a previous life."  
  
One eyebrow goes up. "I'm... going to take that as a compliment," he says. He gives her a brief kiss on the lips, one hand resting on her stomach. "Are you feeling more relaxed now?"  
  
Relaxed? She thinks about it. Relaxed... yes, she's feeling very relaxed. She still feels stretched out and strangely... _aware_ , but the moondrums have receded to a manageable hum, and she doesn't feel the force of the wolf trying to burst out of her body anymore. She doesn't even have to concentrate. "Is that why you did this?" she asks. "You were trying to relax me?"  
  
He gives her a little shrug. "I thought I'd give it a shot. The sleeping thing didn't really work, so I figured..."  
  
She laughs. And she pulls the pillow from beneath her head and smacks him in the face with it.  
  
"Okay... not really the reaction I was expecting..."  
  
She rolls onto her side facing him, hugging the cool pillow to her chest. He's way, way too good for her. "I love you," she says suddenly.  
  
He smiles and leans down, kisses her again, soft. He doesn't say it back, but that's okay. He never does. "I knew you wouldn't hurt me," he says, "even if it didn't work." His hand touches her collar. "You think we can take this off now?"  
  
"I thought you liked it."  
  
His hand toys with the chain a little, considering. "I like it better when I can see your neck," he says, eyes straying to the place where her jugular is concealed.  
  
She gives him a wary expression. "You want to shake on that not-devouring-each-other thing first?"  
  
He gives her a sly grin, voice lowering a bit. "I thought you liked it when I devoured you."  
  
"Pervert," she murmurs, leaning up to kiss him again.  
  
They take their time. As the kiss deepens, Angel reaches over and unbuckles the leather collar, slips it from her neck. She feels suddenly like she can breathe again, and she breathes him in deeply, smelling his desire for her, the blood she drew from his side, the musky scent of herself on his breath. Not breaking their kiss, she moves up, crawls over his legs, straddling him on her knees. Her skin is still hot and tight but she wants him now, again, more than ever.  
  
"Make love to me," she whispers. And he answers her willingly, but not with words.  
  
After, they lie curled together on the bed, naked. Angel's pajama pants are hanging off the corner of the mattress, Nina's tank top on the floor with her panties. The smell of blood is diminished; she licked the drying red trails from his side and the cuts are already smoothing away into his skin. She feels safe, relaxed. Sleepy. But there's something she wants to know before she goes to sleep.  
  
"Angel," she says softly, not sure if he's awake or not.  
  
"Mmm?" he answers.  
  
"The two wolves. In the legend. How do you know which one wins?"  
  
He snuggles closer against her back, arm tightening around her. "Oh," he says quietly. "They say it's the one that you feed."  
  
She looks at the smoking bowl of herbs under the window. The smoke is dwindling, but she doesn't light any more. She doesn't need to. It's almost morning, and her body is pleasantly tired, tingly. She closes her eyes.  
  
Nina is hanging from the edge of a chasm. The evil thing is snarling at her, baring its teeth. But she's had enough of that. She snarls right back. The evil thing pauses, cocks his head at her. She bares her teeth at him, lips curling back, a loud, threatening sound rumbling from deep in her chest. He takes a small step away from the edge as she begins to pull herself up, a renewed strength flooding through her limbs, the beat of the moon pulsing through her blood. As she gets to her feet, she tips her head back and howls at the sky, a cry of triumph, a victory call.  
  
The evil thing seems to shrink before her. When she looks at it again, it is only a black wolf, and he looks frightened. She grins a feral grin and takes a step toward him. He turns immediately and runs from her into the forest, pausing just once to look back. She howls one more time at the sky, a long, joyous sound, then digs her toes into the soft earth and gives chase.  
  
*


End file.
